Girls at the Park

It rained yesterday for about 5 minutes and then the sun came out. It's amazing what happens on our street at a time like this. All the kids come pouring out of the houses. So they were playing and to sun was shining so I thought that I would get some pictures for Sean.
This is Charlie and Lexi up a tree.

Charlie taking a minute to relax. Take a look at her feet. Did I mention the rain. Not sure what she was doing playing without shoes but she sure had fun.

Swinging is one of her favorite things. Monkey bars are her favorite but we don't have any of those. She was practicing jumping out.

Jessie love to bring me flowers. I'm just glad that this time it wasn't the ones out of the neighbors garden.

She wanted to be in the tree like Charlie but her bravery only goes so far. She smiling but she wouldn't let go of the branch. Very funny.

This is Jessie with her friend Josh. They were chasing each other with swords(sticks) and having a great time.

April Showers 5K run/walk/crawl

On this course they had us do 2.5 K and then do the same thing again. It is not my favorite way to do it. When we got back to the starting line they said that we had to turn around and go again. That was really hard. Maybe it's a good thing that they were handing out t-shirts. So because we were doing two laps we got to see everyone twice. This is Taylors running buddy. I don't know him but I guess he runs about as fast as her. Our friend Nancy is walking in front of me in the purple. She is pushing Trent who belongs to Lexi.

Here is our friend Chad (pushing the stroller) with Kira and Christian (who belong to him and Terrilee-not pictured). Jessie is running alongside and doing really well. Elder Openshaw (one of our senior missionaries) is right behind them. And if you squint you can see Gavin at the end of the street.

This is what Gavin looked like when we passed him. I think he was trying to tell me that he was done. But he bucked up and finished the race.

This is Lexi. She wanted to try running it this month and she did the whole thing. She did great. And I got to push the twins. Haylee (in the pink pants and blue shirt) and Charlie (in the blue pants and shirt) found a friend to run with. She had a scooter and they traded off through the whole run.

Charlie at the finish line. And Haylee coming in right behind her.

After the run we found some cover and had some lunch. Elder and Sister Openshaw (on the left) have really been trying to find more things for us to do as a branch or with as many as they can get. It's has been really great to find things to do with other families.

Jessie, Charlie, Haylee and Trent found a spot in the sun to get warmed up.

Taylor was sitting on the ground so the babies would come and play with her.

It worked too. This is Logan and he loves to play with Taylor.

After the run and picnic we all went our seperate ways. We I don't mean that as a family we went one way and the other went their way. I took the boys, Gavin, Christian and Trent. Lexi took Charlie, Haylee, Laycee and Logan. And Chad took Kira and Jessie. Then we all meet back at the movie at 3:00.

Kira and Jessie had a good time together. The movie that we watched was Nim's Island. It was good and I would recommend it.

All in all we had a great day hanging out with friends.

Our trip to Venizia (Venice)

Dear Readers,
We went to Venice today and I wanted to post our day. But as happens to me so often I end up putting to much on. So just bare with me as you read through our day. It was great and our friends Dave and Lexi, Haylee and Trent, Laycee and Logan got to spend part of the day with us. We really had a great time and when we got home the kids asked me what we were going to do tomorrow. All I could think was that maybe it would be fun to just take a nap. Just kidding. The kids are on spring break this week so hopefully we will find our selves looking for more adventures. Hope you enjoy looking at our one from today.
Ciao
Julie

Murano

This is a not so great picture of a glass blowing demonstration. The guys giving the demonstration weren't very good either. But it was still fascination to watch how it is done.

This is the name of the shop that showed us the demonstration. I think I forgot to mention that it was free. Maybe that's why it wasn't very good. But the shop had some really amazing things in it.

This is one of the streets that we were walking down. It had lots of shops for us to look into. Lexi taking a picture and Dave walking away.

Jessie made me take this picture. I put it on the blog for two reasons. One is because Sean will understand the pressure that Jessie put me under to take it. She can be very persuasive when she wants to. And two I wanted to put a warning out to everyone that in 10 or 15 years when Jessie starts her own blog this is the sort of thing that we will be seeing a lot of.

This is the lunch counter ( I'm not sure what else to call it because it sure wasn't a restaurant). But the pizza and fries were great. Anyway, I thought that the name warranted mentioning. Very funny.

Here is Gavin, Trent, Charlie and Haylee and one of the bridges in Murano.

Here is what kids look like when the grown-ups are looking at all the fascinating things in the store window.

Here we are on yet another bridge. Gavin, Charlie, Trent, Jessie, Haylee

This is a glass sculpture. It is amazing. Who ever made this put a lot of time, effort and creativity into it.

This is a lighthouse on one side of the island. It's the first one that I've seen there.

At the base of the lighthouse was a small deposit of sea shells. So I let the kids look through them to see if they could find some that weren't broken. Surprisingly they found several.

Then we had to wait for the waterbus to give us a ride back to Venice. Haylee, Logan, Lexi, Dave and Laycee.

Taylor was feeling a little under the weather so she just pulled up a bench and took a nap. I think that it helped.

This is the kids on the waterbus. They wanted to ride in the back so that they could "get some fresh air." That's what they said but I think they just wanted to be outside.

Our Walk About

When we were done on Murano we took the waterbus back to Venice. But we didn't want to ride the bus all the way around the island so we got off on the wrong side and walked across so that we could see the Rialto Bridge and San Marco Square. These are the streets of Venice.

On this street Jessie can touch both side of the street.

Taylor wanted to try it out to. If she was any wider she wouldn't fit down the street at all.

Charlie is always finding these nooks that are great for pictures. If I could just get her to stop with the fake smiles.

Jessie just likes to pose. She doesn't care if you take her picture of not.

Gavin and Charlie were watching this Gondolier get his gondola ready for work.

All in all our "walk about"... wait that's Australian, but you know what I mean, was fun.

The Rialto Bridge

You know when you are playing tourist and you ask someone else to get a picture of you and then you do the same for them. Well it always seems to me that it is always the busiest place. So this is us on the top of the Rialto Bridge with the Grand Canal in the background even though you can't really see them.Taylor, Gavin and Charlie on the bridge. Jessie wouldn't stay up there without me and I couldn't figure out how to get the picture and be on the bridge with Jessie also.

This is Jessie and Charlie looking through the bridge at the canal.

This is Jessie's other end.

In the middle of the bridge there are shops and steps in the the middle of the shops. Taylor and Charlie totally look posed (like they would rather be somewhere else). Jessie...well...I'm not sure, maybe a scary face. And Gavin really did want to be somewhere else.

This was a little shop down the hill from the bridge. All the little things on the wall moved like tick tock.

Outside the store was this pinoccio doll. Jessie had to get her picture with it.

Then Charlie had to.

And of course so did Gavin.

But not Taylor.

Diego the Gondolier

We took a trip through the canals of Venice. It was really expensive. I'm glad that we did it but we won't be doing that again. The girls especially liked it when our gondolier sang to us.

This is Julie and Taylor with Diego our Gondolier in the background. He kept putting his foot on the walls to keep us from running into them. Jessie and Charlie laughed every time he did it.

This is Marco Polo's house. We just drove(okay floated) by and didn't get out and go in.

Diego told us that the house behind him was Casanova's house. I think that when I was trying to take the picture he thought that maybe I thought that he was a Casanova. What was really funny was when Jessie asked what a Casanova was and I had to explain it to her.

He was very nice and didn't sing to badly either. When we were almost done with our ride we remember to ask him his name. When the girls heard that his name was Diego they sang him the Diego song. Go Diego Go. He thought that was very funny.